Animus of Being
by undoubtably ugly
Summary: a wordy romp through the brain of Herminone Granger
1. Chapter 1

Hermione took the corner at a run, lithely leaping over the two trick steps and separating one hand from her strategically distributed bags and books to hang on to the post as she rounded the bend. Like everything that she did, it was calculated for maximum efficiency. Such maneuvers would be foolish to attempt at the height of weekday traffic, but this early on a Sunday the early risers would be down at breakfast and the others would still be wrapped in the embrace of sleep. It was with anticipation and almost joy that Miss Granger trotted upwards, floating through the portrait gallery and much to the surprise of certain people….bypassing the library entirely. She reached the door and paused to savor the quiet.

This part of the castle was mostly silent. Years ago there had been more students. There had been more wizards and more people in general, but the two muggle world wars and Grindewald had done much to decimate the population of Britain. The wizard population had been harder hit than that of the muggles, and these empty classrooms stood testament to the loss. Hermione quietly stepped into the room, closing the door softly behind her. She rested her back against the heavy wood as a sense of peace washed over her as she looked upon what she had come to think of as her nest, her refuge, her safe-hold, her garden.

She flung her bag onto one of the low soft couches, and proceeded briskly to the work table that occupied a prominent position towards the far wall. Fires burned and cauldrons bubbled as Hermione crossed to survey her work, frowning at the viscosity of a murky brown liquid on the left, and uttering a very un-lady-like grunt of satisfaction at the contents of a second cauldron. Sliding onto a stool, she pulled a battered and slightly gnawed number 2 pencil from the knot of hair on her head and, flipping open a composition book, began to add current information to the tidy columns of words and numbers that marched obediently across the page. Duty thus discharged, the composition book was closed with a snap and Hermione turned to the unsatisfactory brew that squatted over its burner omitting strange and disturbing odors

The room was bordered on two sides by floor to ceiling windows and had lacked any furnishings whatsoever when she had discovered it. There were no blackboards, no desks, and no chairs. The floors were not the student-resistant stone to be found in most of the classrooms about the castle, but a dark wood that glowed even through the scuffs and marks of age. After she was done with it, it virtually beamed with warmth. She had been visiting this room for three years now and more had been altered than just the floor. The room was truly her own.

Hermione had been raised an only child and knew the beauty of solitude. As much as she had enjoyed having the companionship of others her own age, she never lost the longing for the true peace that comes of being able to retreat to your own room and shut the door on all and sundry. In her early years at Hogwarts, she had found refuge of sorts in the library, but it was still a public place and the knowledge that she was not truly alone sullied her enjoyment of her time there. The room was her peace, her sanity, and her secret. It was a quietness that she hugged to herself in times of stress, a secret to keep her strong.

Casting a hasty glance at her watch, Hermione hefted her satchel up, pulling her hair aside in one smooth motion as the weight settled across shoulder and her hip shifted to the right to keep what seemed to be the elephantine weight of the books from pulling her to the door. She twists her hair up into a knot and jams several pencils in to anchor the mess to her scalp, fighting the good fight against hair with a mind of its own and gravity.


	2. Chapter 2

As professor Binns droned on, she felt her attention waver, her teenage hormones and the sultry warmth of the classroom trying to suck her into the lassitude that had engulfed the other students one by one.

"_Why is sleep irresistible to the teenaged? The fight to remain conscious and attentive in this class has definitely grown fiercer over the years," _she lectured herself.

With steely resolve, Hermione scribbled onward, well formed and modulated words falling from her pen with deadly precision and perfect penmanship.

Hermione had a system. By viciously pinching her thighs and periodically popping small candies into her mouth (a small rebellion against the dictates of her dentist parents) she kept herself conscious enough to possess the only complete set of History of Magic notes that had ever been taken in the years that Binns had taught at Hogwarts, a true testament to her strength of will. The History notes of other students (even the most zealous) would invariably contain passages where the neatly written notes would terminate in a vicious slash, or large ink blot, as quills fell from nerveless fingers and drool stains spread across the page.

Hermione found a cruel kind of satisfaction at having once again proved the triumph of mind over matter. _She_ would not fall asleep in class. _Her_ notes were complete and without drool. She flushed guiltily at the conceit, recalling the one gap in her perfect notes. No one is perfect. She remembered those weeks post-polyjuice when large furry ears and inquisitive wiskers had prevented her from showing her face in public. _A slight miscalculation on my part, I will admit, but you have to give a 12 year old credit for even trying to brew that horrid stuff. _And those classes she had missed when she had been frozen in an awkward position by a great ugly snake. _Can't blame me for that one, not responsible for murderous 40 foot reptile._

She shuddered at the thought. She still sometimes saw those beady red eyes in her dreams, usually somewhere ridiculous and unexpected but none the less terrifying. The sleeping brain doesn't work well with logic, if you see the burning corneas of a monster lizard staring at you from inside the orange juice pitcher, it's still scary.

In any case, her notes were _almost_ complete. She had borrowed notes from the missed lessons from her classmates, and felt secure that by judicious cross referencing, she had a near complete record of all of Binns' lectures, except for a deadly 15 minutes near the end of her second year where it seemed as if the entire student body had nodded off. Strangely enough, this hole in the collective consciousness was not limited to her own class. All the notes she could lay her hands on for the 27th lecture of second year approximately 32 minutes in, trailed off into dried saliva and spilt ink. In her compulsive drive to gather complete study materials for OWLS during her 5th year, she had pillaged the notes of Griffindors (from Ginny to Percy to Molly Weasely), as well as those of several weak willed Hufflepuffs. She looked at over 50 individual sets of notes and found nary a record of those minutes. Hermione felt almost superstitiously that Binns had magically produced some sort of boredom pheromone for that particular lecture, or created his own version of the twilight zone. Hermione had silently filed this under "conspiracy theories" in her mind, but the subconscious continued to float images of mass brainwashing and information censored by the government. These ideas were patently ridiculous, yet she felt a fanatical need to maintain constant vigiliance (thank you Moody) in future classes in case that strange instance reoccurred.

Logically, she ascribed the phenomenon to the almost supernatural power of tedium that Binns wielded, and the particular susceptibility of that age group towards nodding off.

Smiling, she remembered an evening spent tippling some pilfered peach schnapps with the boys. Giggling wildly, they had begun to assign superhero names to the faculty and staff. Captain Linger (Filtch), sidekick of The Mongoose (Snape), silently prowled the countryside looking for things to maim and dismember. Professor Binns had been dubbed "The Great Bore." The Great Bore was an unflappable figure (adorned with the turban and bindi of a swami) who was able to incapacitate large groups of people with a string of meaningless names and dates. There were terrible drawings somewhere, god hope they never see the light of day.

As Hermione scribbled a tedious list of dates and names concerning the wizard influence with the battle of LePonto (a fiasco involving drunken wizards, cantaloupes, trebuchets and a group of muggles too large to obliviate resulting in the first sea battle to use cannon), she caught a glimpse of movement out of the corner of her eye.

In the dark stillness of the classroom, filled with torpid and unmoving forms, a beam of light from the high window had glanced upon a tanned and long fingered hand that was flipping a golden coin over knuckles in the manner of a magician. Hermione found herself mesmerized by the illuminated digits, seemingly disembodied. Her chin wrested on her hand as she watched the coin flip back and forth, a few dust motes barely moving in the light as if to counterpoint the rapid winking of the galleon. She found herself musing that the owner of those beautifully flexible digits must be a mean pianist. Suddenly, her elbow slipped, dislodging a spare quill, which clattered to the floor.

There are some images that are just so visually stunning in their simplicity that they compel the viewer's attention. She had thought the gracefully disembodied hand to be one of them, but as she looked up from her dropped quill, the owner of the pianist hands turned in his chair at the noise, and shifted unknowingly into the beautifully harsh spotlight of sunlight. He was illuminated. He was gorgeous, iconic even, in the light. Hermione was stunned and felt the kick in her gut that she felt when looking at film stills of Marlena Dietrich, Lauren Bacall and Bogart. His brutally angular face, his wide black clad shoulders, and the languid athleticism of his relaxed posture burned with charisma and personality. He was living art. The angles and the stark prominence of that unsmiling face and glowing hand were images worthy of a Hitchcock movie. She suspected that she was gaping, but the aesthete in her would not allow her to turn away. What she would have given for a picture of that moment.

Blaise didn't move. He had turned at the clatter of the quill, and stilled at the indrawn breath and wide eyed appraisal of Granger. She was still staring at him, with the look of one who had just been sucker punched, surprise and pain intermingled. She looked off balance and vulnerable, slightly flushed and confused with those parted lips and wildly struggling hair. Not the Granger that the world normally saw. After what seemed to be an eternity, he leaned closer to her and said sotto voce "It's only a quill Granger. Not the end of the world."

Her faced registered confusion, embarrassment and annoyance in quick succession.

"Pen's not the trouble, I take it? Could be gas from lunch." He said sincerely,

Flapped back into reality by the banal, and typically teenaged male remark, Hermione shot him a look worthy of Molly Weasely for pure disgust. The power of the look was at odds with her unwavering awareness of Blaise, he was amused to see. He was even better than she was at contradictory emotions. He moved back into his seat and resumed work with a look that managed to be gentle, superior, provoking and yet slightly amused.

Trying and failing to erase the image that seemed to have imprinted itself on her retina and sped her pulse, Hermione closed her eyes for a moment and pinched the bridge of her nose. Only hormones, she thought, time enough to deal with those later. Emotions neatly compartmentalized, she opened her eyes, shifted her grip on the quill from desperate clutch to dainty grip and started taking notes.

Her hair slithered out of its moorings and locks drifted down the nape of her neck, to rest against the base of her cheek. An observer noted these occurrences discreetly out of the corner of his eye. Strange, seeing someone you have known and ignored for 6 years and feeling like you missed it all.

As class comes to an end, Hermione rises to her feet, uncrooks her neck and rolls her shoulders. She darts a glance at Blaise, only to find him doing the same. She swings her head sideways, peering intently into the crowd of rowdy adolescents for the two that belonged to her, unaware that she is betrayed by a pinkness in her cheeks as she strides away.

_Got to give the girl credit_, muses Blaise, _she has balls_. He picks up his satchel and drifts smoothly into the crowd, a slight smile playing on his lips.


	3. Chapter 3

"Honestly Ron, I don't know why you keep asking, she would have to be stupid to tell you about any boy she was dating. Everyone at Hogwarts knows you go ballistic when you hear the word boyfriend and Ginny in the same sentence." Hermione crossly uttered, stabbing her pudding viciously with a spoon, reflecting that hormones could go to the devil, for all the trouble they caused. I wonder if there are any spells to surpress them, she mused, then rejected the idea as more trouble than it was worth. One had to learn to deal with the sex drive eventually, and libidinous mistakes were more easily forgiven in the young. She would just have to file her unsavory thoughts of Blaize Zambini under 'learning experience.'

"I'm not acting differently than any other self respecting brothers. Besides, she's too young to be interested in boys," whined Ron.

"Ron, you maniac, if all brothers reacted the way you did towards their sister's potential boyfriends, no one would ever be able to procreate." Hermione retaliated, shaken from her musings by the complete idiocy of one of her closest friends.

"She's right mate." Harry said apologetically as Ron's face turned red at the thought of a reproductive Ginny, "You do kind of come down hard on the poor fellows. I think Michael Corner still pees a little when he sees you."

"That's fine with me. Ginny can buy some cats, never has to go anywhere near a boy. Blissful life, right Hermione?" Ron turned to Hermione with a beaming smile.

"Ron.." Harry stammered, looking warily at Hermione's stony countenance, she looked like she were about to either run crying, or bash Ron on the head.

"Ronald Weasely!" Obviously she had chosen bashing, Harry mused as he quietly slid away from the red headed target. Discretion was the better part of valor when it came to an angry Hermione. She was wicked sharp with the home truths and, ever so rarely when she resorted to physical violence, the victim ended up on the ground, emasculated, embarrassed and stunned. This looked to be one of those occasions.

A look of stupid trepidation overcame Ron's face, like a fast moving squall over a summer sky. He had the appearance of a basset hound found snacking in a cat litter box, face unwittingly smeared with shit, slowly realizing that trouble had arrived. He tucked his chin against his chest in preparation for a harangue. Hermione leaned close and attacked from an unexpected angle, like a master fencer.

"Ronald" she spoke in an intensely controlled quiet voice, which showed the obvious influence of years of tutelage under the dulcet tones of Snape, "I don't believe you have considered the phenomenal insult you just offered me."

Harry had to wonder at the power of the death glare Hermione was shooting Ron, the end of the table falling silent as the fury of Hermione's tone captured the attention of all around. She looked all the more terrifying for the restraint she was exhibiting.

Hermione's hand darted out and captured Ron's right ear with all the swiftness of a mongoose, startling a jump out of the 6-8 people now watching and drawing the attention of those further down.

"If you think for one moment, that I am going to sit here and listen to your idiotic and hypocritical posturing with no comment, you have to be terminally stupid. If you have no problem with sticking your tongue and possibly other body parts into and near several classmates I could name, I fail to see how you can expect complete nunnery from a sister only one year younger than yourself. Even if you are so ignorantly sexist, that still gives you no right to impose your stupidly outdated value system on another individual."

A swift yank pulled Ron's head within inches of Hermione's irate face and startled a yipe out of him. She continued, pounding the last nail into his coffin, as she lowered her voice even more and practically breathed anger into his stupid, stupid face.

"And if you think that I am a shining great example for Ginny to follow, I'll be glad to tell her so. She can come with me next time I go to the nudist colony with my family. She has quite a few naked men to see before she can catch up with me. It is a valuable learning experience, that way when you become intimate with someone, you have a frame of reference and can tell if the man's dick is really, REALLY tiny."

Hermione directed this last comment down her nose to Ron as she released his ear and he melted back into his seat, his eyes wide with horror and dawning embarrassment as he realized she was implying that he was severely under-endowed. His mouth flapping as he searched for something to say, he turned to Harry in mute supplication. Harry gave Hermione a look of repressed humor and appreciation before turning to Ron with a resigned look. The end of the table was alive with snickers, whispers and a few confused faces.

"Mate," Harry said "I told you your mouth would get you in trouble one of these days."

A puce face, more soundless mouth flapping and waving arms were the only response out of Ron. Harry clapped him on the shoulder and pulled him to his feet.

"C'm on Ron, lets get you out of here before you step in it again."

With a wry salute, Harry hauled the hapless Ron out of the great hall, right past a very surprised looking Blaise Zambini.

Blast, thought Hermione, stupid hormones strike again.


	4. Chapter 4

Over the years she had added various fortifications to her stronghold. Whether any of the faculty knew she had claimed the territory for her own, she knew not, but she had become fairly certain that over the last two years that she had made her presence in the room and the room itself unnoticeable to all but the most discerning eyes. She had a strong suspicion that Dumbledore had known, but the man knew the value of secrets himself so well that Hermione had felt no fear of exposure.

He had spoken to her once when she had come seeking advice about a moody Harry Potter. "You have read The Secret Garden, Yes?" Dumbledore continued as Hermione nodded her head in confused assent, "I have always loved The Secret Garden," He said with a twinkle "I was already quite an old man when I read it, but I think it speaks truly about the moral decisions that are required of children. Adults often regard childhood as a time of joy unaffected by the difficulties of reality, but that is not the case. Mary is told not to enter the garden of her uncle, that it is forbidden. She does not obey, but follows her own instincts and takes what is not wanted and turns it into refuge. That garden turns out to be the cure for all that ails her relatives, body and soul. This is a time of great turmoil, and people will not always know what is best for them. No one is certain what is right. Trust to your instincts to help others and yourself. Hopefully that will be enough."

Hermione left his office unsure what could be done for Harry, but certain that she had secured tacit approval from the Headmaster to take her "bit of earth."

She spent the summer after her fourth year researching unplottability spells (unfortunately not too useful – you can't hide an unplottable thing within another unplottable thing, it cancels out or something) and picked over all the obscure texts on subversion and illusion that she could lay her little grubby hands upon. Some broad compliments won her some crucial advice from Mad Eye Moody, and by the time Christmas break rolled around, it truly was a stronghold, and a war room.

Why she had kept it a secret this long, she didn't know, but it was filed in her mind under "last resort" something to be considered in case of emergency. The trickiest bit was dealing with the Marauder's Map. It was pure happenstance and good planning on Hermione's part that had prevented Harry from discovering her hidey hole ere now. Not wanting to attempt to alter (and potentially ruin) the map that had aided their cause, Hermione decided to charm the next best thing – Harry, or rather his spectacles. Although she felt some slight amount of guilt about this, it was essentially a protection of her own privacy. Really, she sometimes thought that Harry looked at that map more than was appropriate or proper. As he slept one evening, she filched his glasses and the map and spent nearly two hours ensuring that she had it all in order. From that point on, whenever Harry pulled out the map, the spectacles would go on alert. If he looked for Hermione and she was in the garden (as she liked to refer to it) the glasses would alter his vision and show Hermione to be in the library instead. If this indeed occurred, the glasses would send a signal to a necklace that she had enchanted as a receiver and she would have ample time to scamper down to the library before anyone came looking for her. She really was amply prepared.

After losing her temper so spectacularly and publicly, her haunt was just the place to retreat.


End file.
